Nescire aude.

April 16, 2016

Sculptural realism, or, Michelangelo on knowing one's mind

As is well known, or at least, as is much said, Michelangelo described himself, in sculpting, as merely removing the marble obscuring the sculpture latent within it. (Or perhaps as removing the parts he didn't want. But let's go with the formula previously given.) We can give this a strong reading: the sculpture is already there in the marble and has only to be revealed by the sculptor. In that case, the sculptor can do well or poorly according to how well the thing, when declared done, actually does align with the latent sculpture. That is, the sculpture already in the marble gives the standard of correctness for the sculptor's activities, and it is a valid question, both for the sculptor and for appreciators of the result, whether the sculptor got it right. And that question stands regardless of how satisfied with the sculpture, considered as it were in its own right, anyone might be. Michelangelo's David: a masterpiece, without question, a virtuoso work with which anyone ought be satisfied. But perhaps in that block of marble there lurked—a statue of Perseus. Michelangelo, and we, might be perfectly satisfied with the sculpture. But it's wrong; irretrievably so, in fact.

No one really cares whether or not the sculpture in fact produced corresponds to what lay within the marble, which is as good a sign as any, I suppose, that no one actually believes that there is such a latent sculpture. The example occurred to me, though, during a talk at the APA on the subject of articulating one's thoughts, in which it was presumed that there is a real thought, had but not known, prior to its being put into words. The leading example was: after a seminar, or a colloquium, one is nagged by an inarticulate objection one can't quite put one's finger on, to which one wants to give words, and the leading presumption was a realist one: in such a case, there is a fully formed, determinate, articulated-in-itself (the way a skeleton is articulated; it has joints, verbal parts) thought that one really does have. The only problem is that one doesn't know its articulation. The task of "articulating one's thought" is the task of finding out what words correspond to the thought.

There are several consequences of this presumption. One is that when you think back about the subject matter of the seminar/colloquium, the point of doing so isn't (or isn't just) to figure out what you think about it, to formulate a thought about it. You think about the subject matter because you think it will help you accomplish the task you are actually set, which is to uncover the content of a thought you already had. If you work through the subject matter and come to an understanding with which you are wholly content, which you have articulated (you have given words to it), there's still the question: but is this the thought that I previously had?

I think that no one, when they've come to an understanding, a formulation, with which they're satisfied as regards the subject matter, actually goes on to ask that question. No one cares about it, any more than they care about whether Michelangelo got it right. Good thing, too, because how could you tell? People take having arrived at a response that presently satisfies them as a reason to stop deliberating; it resolves the mental itch that got them started. People speak as if they're trying to get at a thought already had, but they act as if they're trying to give shape to something as yet indeterminate, based on the hunch: there might be a thought to think here. And I think this is a pretty good reason to think that, really, people don't think that they have fully determinate, but unknown, thoughts, in this sort of case, anyway.

(Long-time readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I, of course, think that there is no determinate thought prior to the conclusion of the process of deliberation, and that the same goes for desires, as my several posts about Krista Lawlor's paper on desire probably suggested or possibly even said outright—it's been a while. Many years ago I actually used the same line of thought in talking about desires with her, for dissertation-related reasons: you might wonder "what flavor of ice cream do I want?", decide to get vanilla, be perfectly happy with it—and yet, on the view that holds that there was already a fully determinate but unarticulated desire, be wrong! You actually wanted chocolate.)

Comments

This reminds me of a passage from Peirce's "The Fixation of Belief": "Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and that we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. And it is clear that nothing out of the sphere of our knowledge can be our object, for nothing which does not affect the mind can be the motive for mental effort."

Peirce's line here has always struck me as getting more right than the people he's arguing against, but not without erring in its own fashion. Peirce is right that truth is not *the* aim of inquiry, as inquiry is always motivated by a need to settle opinion in some particular practical area -- and settling on an opinion is settling on its truth, so any added question we might ask about the truth of an opinion we're settling on would be idle. But there's no reason to deny that in inquiry we seek true opinions: those are what we think we have when we settle on opinions, and we can't become open to the thought that we've settled on an untrue opinion without ipso facto unsettling that opinion. Inquiry, when it goes well, settles opinions by our coming to hold true opinions: this is the line I think Peirce should've gone with. That we can't split inquiry into two steps, settling on an opinion and looking into the truth of that opinion, doesn't mean that inquiry is really just one step, where opinions are settled on without caring about their truth.

Analogously, I don't see that the line you're taking actually shows that there aren't determinate thoughts (or desires) prior to deliberation. I might not *ask* "But is this the thought I previously had?" or "But is this the desire I really have?" after ending a process of deliberation. But this might just be because I think I have settled those questions in my ordinary process of deliberation -- and I might, later on, come to think I *didn't* actually settle those questions, and so come to think something went a bit off with my earlier deliberating.

For example, in the seminar case: I *have* become satisfied with an objection I constructed after class as being what I had in mind earlier, and then came to think instead that what I was trying to say in class was worse than what I came to say after class -- because I become alerted to a confusion in the expressions I tried to make use of in class, which confusion would be simply unintelligible if I had been trying to give voice to my later, better, objection. This normally doesn't happen when I try to find my words after class, but it doesn't never happen.

Oh, it doesn't *show* that there aren't determinate thoughts prior to deliberation. But I think it does show that people are less committed to there being determinate thoughts prior to deliberation than it seems at first blush.

I don't see how the process of deliberation about the general subject matter I take my earlier thought to have been concerned with could adequately settle the question regarding what that thought was. These seem to be just totally different questions, to me, once you grant that there was a determinate thought prior to deliberation.

What, for instance, is "off" with your previous deliberation if you later come to think you didn't settle the question "is this the thought I previously had?"? Is it that you now think you have a better thought? Or that you now think that your deliberation was still in the grips of a confusion? Those might indicate that your deliberation about the seminar topic was still imperfect. But they seem to have nothing to do with the question whether or not you had settled the question about your earlier thought, and your opinion that you hadn't actually settled that question doesn't indicate that your deliberation was faulty in any of those ways.

"Oh, it doesn't *show* that there aren't determinate thoughts prior to deliberation. But I think it does show that people are less committed to there being determinate thoughts prior to deliberation than it seems at first blush."

Okay, that's fair enough; I think it can do that much work. I wouldn't want to defend the claim that there always are determinate thoughts prior to deliberation, anyway. But they seem to me to be real some of the time.

"I don't see how the process of deliberation about the general subject matter I take my earlier thought to have been concerned with could adequately settle the question regarding what that thought was. These seem to be just totally different questions, to me, once you grant that there was a determinate thought prior to deliberation."

Well, it's me thinking the thoughts in both cases, and I don't change so much between the middle of a seminar and its end. So if I think about what I was thinking about when I had the thought I've since forgotten, I can use that as a guide to figure out what I might have thought earlier. I also don't generally need to figure out what my earlier thought was while having no clue what it might have been; I have a hazy notion of what it was, and just need to clear up the haze in my memory. But that can happen indirectly, even if I'm not trying to answer the question of what it was I earlier thought at all.